The Ballad of Damon and Elena
by Sunshinegirl010
Summary: Title comes from the Avett Brothers song. Elena has been gone for five years after Damon-in the heat of the moment-tells her to leave. With a post card that announces her arrival, Damon dreads her coming back and says he doesn't care if he see's her. But is he truly over the lovely Elena? Delena, AU. All vampire. Some sexual content and language. One-shot.


_Okay guys! This is an idea that has been floating around in my head for awhile now! I really hope you guys respond well to this one-shot and please don't hesitate to leave me a review of your thoughts! :) I would greatly appreciate it! _

_A little background: Elena has left Damon and Mystic Falls behind for five years. She finally returns from her "vacation" and Damon isn't necessarily happy about that. _

_If you've heard the Avett Brothers song before, then you pretty much have a good idea of how the story goes! _

The Ballad of Damon and Elena

_Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate…_

Damon scoffs when he reaches the postcard in the midst of his large stack of bills that seem to be piling up more and more lately. It wasn't the fact that he couldn't pay them, it was simply that he didn't want to anymore. If he was being completely honest with himself, he almost liked the drama that came with the phone call from the infuriated collection agency that "just didn't understand why he didn't pay his bills on time when he clearly had the money."

Really it was the only human contact he had when he wasn't fucking someone.

He wonders idly for a moment if it's from Stefan, but the chances of Stefan going to a tourist information center and picking a postcard that reads _From Sunny California: Wish You Were Here, _seems pretty slim. No matter how much he may have changed since he left the ripper in the past, his brother was still the brood-master.

Damon scoffs and shakes his head. No, it was defiantly not from Stefan.

Curiosity finally gets the best of him after staring at the fake beach scene and off centered palm tree for the better half of five minutes.

To say that he's shocked that it's from Elena would be a lie. She likes to keep him posted on her where bouts, as if she knows the personal torture it puts him through to have imagine her anywhere else besides right here with him.

He must read the note on the back a dozen times, perhaps more.

_Damon, _

_ While the weather here is great and the ocean could swallow me whole everyday if it wished, my vacation is finally ending. I'm ready to see you if you're ready to see me. I'll be home late. Take your time to make up your mind. _

_ With Love, _

_ Elena _

_P.S. I can't wait to see you again. _

He stares at the words, so simple and seemingly serene; he'd never know that it took her five postcards to get it right. He wanted to ask her why now? Why not five years ago when she'd disappeared without a word, leaving him only a note like this that told him she which direction she was headed in this time.

Maybe she wanted him to chase her, but at the time, the entire chase had wilted away from him. She'd left him as a hollow shell of his former self. And while he knows it's his fault that she left in the first place it still hurts like hell everyday that he's unable to hold her in his arms. He knew once he allowed Elena Gilbert to love him back that he'd never be the same again. And damn it if he didn't hit the nail on the head with that one.

His life was meaningless now. All he did from day to day was lie around the Boarding House, drink bourbon and imagine a life where everyone he got to know didn't want to run away from him every five seconds. These past five years had been hell without her, but it wasn't like he was going to tell her that.

What truly puzzled him most was why now the best time for her to return. He told himself that he didn't care if she came back or not. It wasn't going to change the way he felt about her. No matter how much she begged, pleaded, or professed her love, Elena would never be able to win him back after this.

He may as well add that lie to his list of sins.

_Hate reads the letter and throws it away…_

The letter taunts Damon in ways that makes him swear the paper is bewitched. It calls to him in the darkest parts of the night when he misses her and nothing makes him feel close to her except the loopy scrawl of her pen on paper.

He wonders if she used the expensive fountain pen that she stole from his desk, carrying it around in her purse like it didn't cost him hundreds of dollars. Or perhaps she used a cheap hotel pen, one that has the Hilton logo on the side and a non replaceable cartage for the ink that cost the franchise fifty cents to make. It disgusts him that the art of fine letter writing has gone to complete and utter ruin.

For some reason he hopes she used the fountain pen.

This morning, Damon looks at the letter lying carelessly on his bedside table, as if it doesn't know how its mere presence is making his skin crawl. The woman next to him rustles the sheets as she shifts in her sleep, waking up easily as the sun dances its way through the large windows in his bedroom.

He smiles at her, running his knuckles along her cheek. He halts for a moment, remembering a similar situation with a completely different woman—one that had a softer more innocent smile and a darker shade of chocolate brown eyes.

Suddenly he no longer feels at ease with the situation around him. Stacy's brown eyes making him shake, wanting a different woman to be here with him.

Damon picks up the postcard and reads the note again, suddenly feeling angry all over again. _It's like she just walked out that door. _He thinks idly to himself.

"Who's Elena?" asks Stacy and Damon sneers, the card crumbling in his hands as he squeezes his fist around it and throws it across the room. He laughs to himself, thinking that everything Elena touches eventually ends up just like that card. Roughed up and thrown away. A crumpled up piece of its former self.

"No one sweet cheeks. At least not someone that anybody noticed was gone anyway."

He decides right then and there he doesn't care if he ever sees Elena Gilbert again or not. Who cares if she was returning to Mystic Falls?

_Love sings a song as she sails through the sky…_

Elena hums softly to herself during the duration of the flight. She gets the feeling that the guy beside her is ready to go off on her for constant low buzzing in his ear from her song, but with a push of compulsion she was able to convince him that he actually enjoyed it.

Where the song comes from she can't quite remember, but she has a feeling that it has something to do with Damon and a dance that began everything that ever happened to them.

The blue water calms her as she watches it from her window, wondering silently to herself when the plane is going to land. The water reminds her of an icy blue stare that calms her when she doesn't have anywhere else to turn. Never has she longed to look someone in the eyes as much as she does now. She doesn't think that she can take be physically distant from him any longer.

Thinking back on the day she left, Elena wonders if she could have done things differently. While Damon had been the one that told her to leave, she knew deep down that he didn't really mean it. But his insecurities had become too much for her. All she wanted was for him to accept that she loved him. He could never do that for her. So she left.

Although Elena had every right to leave, she never should have been gone for this long and Damon deserved better than a woman who loved him that disappeared for five years. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd already moved on.

Though she would be even more surprised if he actually did.

She never expected a reply to her postcard. And what right would she have if she did. She wasn't even sure that Damon would take her back when she got home.

Hmmm…._Home_.

_Hate keeps his head up and walks through the street…_

Damon doesn't know how long he's been walking. All that he can say with certainty is that he can't go home. Because within the next few hours, Elena will be there.

The thought of facing her after all these years, having to be in the same room with her. It was almost too much to bear and he was unsure what his initial reaction would be once he saw her for the first time.

It wouldn't necessarily be the highlight of his life if he attacked and killed the one person he thinks he's ever **truly **loved in a fit of rage over a five year break up. But that was just the thing.

Were they broken up?

He had no idea. These days he didn't know if he was coming or going. He knew the usual day drinkers as he passed them through town. He nods his head at the few he knows, even shakes hands with the lonely ones, hoping to get his own lonely mind away from the heartache that awaited him at his own house.

It's true what they say; misery does love company.

He ends up in a bar, not his usual, with a serious look on his face as he tries to drown his sorrows in as much bourbon as they'll allow him to drink here. He imagines as long as he doesn't make a complete ass hat of himself, they may just let him stay here all night. However, that dream is quickly shattered as he's cut off after his fifth bourbon and he knows that he could probably compel this guy to leave him alone, but decides that he's better off alone anyway.

So Damon compels the bartender to give him the bottle and returns again, lonely in the street to his blue Camero parked across town.

_Love arrives safely, with suitcase in tow…_

Elena walks slowly off the plane, half expecting Damon to be sitting in the waiting area, smirk firmly in place asking her what took so long.

She is sorely disappointed.

Not that she really had any right to expect him here anyway; Damon had every reason to want to kick her to the curb for the rest of their supernatural lives. If he never wanted to see Elena again, she would understand.

Selfishly, however, she hopes with every fiber of her being that Damon doesn't feel that way. She doesn't know if she could bear this ache any longer.

Life without Damon had quickly become meaningless. Gone was her reason to live and thrive and be the best vampire she could be. She was almost ashamed at the monster that she quickly saw herself becoming without him by her side. She couldn't imagine eternity without him with her. She didn't want to find out what that would be like.

She stopped finding out new things about herself every day. Damon made her grow in ways that she didn't know possible. In the beginning, Elena had thought it was Damon who was changing. But as time wore on, she discovered that it was Damon who was changing her. And it was most certainly for the better. She had become confident and sure of her every move. Nothing she did was questioned, because she didn't allow it to be.

Damon was that change in her. God she couldn't lose him.

She could only hope that he would realize her mistake and forgive her this time. Even though it was the last thing she deserved. Elena just wanted him to _trust_ her again. She wanted him to _hold_ her again. She wanted him to _care_ for her again.

_Hate sits alone on the hood of his car…_

He doesn't know how long he's been sitting here.

Damon laughs at himself for a moment, because he always ends up here at the quarry, drinking away the thought of some girl. He did it once for a woman he thought he loved and now he's doing it for one that he thought loved him. Then again, he knew what they said about assumptions.

But the thought of some girl driving him to drink again drove Damon insane. He was supposed to be stronger than this.

_No. Not just some girl this time. The girl. _

Shaking the thought from his weary head, he finds solace once again in the burning down the back of his throat from the full bottle of bourbon that he's more than half way done with. He wonders how much longer it would take him to die from this.

He can feel the moon and the stars above him, can feel their pull as they beg him to look in the face of their beauty and their stories. But Damon is far past listening to whatever curve ball that the damn _stars _were going to throw his way next.

He always knew that the universe was against him, but he thought it wouldn't be such a cruel bitch to take away his happiness when he was finally rewarded with it.

He wants to stare at the moon and wonder if somewhere; somehow that Elena is looking at the same one. Probably not considering that her flight landed almost an hour ago, not that he's counting down the minutes or anything.

Sighing, he takes another swig from the bottle pretending to ignore the clock that counts down the minutes till she's here and keeping his eyes firmly away from the moon that is filling her gaze this very moment.

_Love takes a taxi a young man drives…_

Elena stares at the moon above, wondering if Damon was looking to and instantly feeling closer to him. There was something about being under the same moon as him that gave hope to her soul and closeness to him in this world of miles and roads that kept her away from him.

She tries to ignore the awkward silence that had been screaming at the pair since she'd gotten in the taxi.

"So, how long have you been driving these?" Elena asks dumbly. She wants to bang her head on the window for her stupidity. When had she become so bad at communicating?

Matt turns to look at for a moment, letting his eyes linger on her face too long before finally pulling his eyes back to the road, barely missing a Mini Cooper by a half an inch. Really it was a sick twist of fate that she'd end up _his _taxi.

"Not long, but long enough." He replies and Elena nods, not sure what to say to the hope that she suddenly saw filling his eyes.

Running to Matt after leaving Damon had been a mistake. Sleeping with him had been an even bigger one.

The loneliness of leaving Damon and the fact that she knew she could not return to him; however, had been overwhelming. And Matty had always had the bluest eyes. Even if they were the wrong ones they were enough for her that night.

She remembers tearing up a few times while it lasted – which hadn't been long at all – but Matt had never noticed. He was just as clumsy at love making as he had been all those years ago in the flat bed of his truck. And try as she might not too, all she could think of the entire time was Damon with his smooth lips with moves to match. The calculating cat like way he maneuvered in bed was nothing like Matt who plowed into her like she was just another line backer.

The next morning she was gone. She hadn't even bothered to write Matt a note.

"Elena, why are you back?" He asks, so sure she'll give him the answer that he's searching for, that maybe after all of this time. After losing her parents and falling in love with two brothers and becoming a vampire and searching for herself a bit, that she had finally decided that with him was where she belonged all along.

Elena wasn't fooled. She could hear the true question behind his words. And as they pulled in front of the boarding house, with its large windows and empty rooms, Matt was pretty sure that he had his answer.

"I'm sorry Matty. I shouldn't have used you the way I did, but, "she looks to the house and shrugs her shoulders, her words getting softer with every syllable, "…he's it for me."

Matt nods his head quickly, looking down at the steering wheel before getting out and helping her with her bags. He knew better than to hold onto this dream, but damn it if he hadn't, for five years at that.

He tries to hide his tears from her as he gets back in the taxi, but she smells them anyway. And as he makes his way down the gravel drive of the Salvatore Boarding House, he wonders if he'll ever even see her again.

That thought alone makes him cry even more.

_Hate gets home lucky to still be alive…_

How he got back here, he'll never know.

When the bottom of the bottle of bourbon produced no answers, Damon threw it into the quarry to rest with the other poor souls that had ever had the chance of coming into contact with him in a bad mood.

He screams her name when he realizes that more than likely she's returned and calls her every name in the book when he knows for sure that she's in the house.

He's jumping around the front yard and cursing like a mad man, but he's just so angry and all of this pent up frustration is choosing to come out of him in a very un-Damon like hissy fit.

He can smell her presence here like the coming of a summer rain. He knows the slow inhale of her breathing as it comes from the parlor and it angers him even more when he hears the clink of a glass that lets him know that she's drinking his expensive bourbon.

He continues yelling in the driveway, calling her everything that he thinks will make her on edge for a fight, ready to confront whatever fury she was sure to come out of that door in any second now.

But she never comes.

Eventually his throat is tired and his legs are weary and he decides that it's not worth it. So he goes inside.

The kitchen light is on, just another clue that she's returned. Elena never could turn off a damn light when she left a room. Her bags rest carelessly next the island and it's taking everything within him to not set the bags neatly in row where they at least don't look like a pile of bags in his kitchen.

It really takes everything within to not carry them all straight up to their-his room.

He notices the clock once again looking at the time. Hmmm….2:55. Damn thing was still slow. Although he thought he'd reset it last week.

Damon weakly walks to the hallway and halts when her breath hitches as she notices him.

_Love has been waiting, patient and kind…_

Elena's eyes cast over to where Damon stands wearily in the hallway in front of the living room. She knows he has to be angry at her, but he just looks…exhausted.

He would almost have to be from the tantrum that he'd just thrown in the front yard. She knew that he was trying to get a rise out of her from all of the hurtful things that he said, but Elena knew it was only his pride talking.

There would be no getting Damon back without a fight, but she'd been prepared for that. It pretty much came with the territory. Her only concern now, was finding any indication that he actually wanted her to be here.

However her poor exhausted vampire was a pro at hiding his emotions when he wanted to and he isn't giving up his star status now for anything. Elena keeps trying to accept this, reminding herself over and over that you get more with honey than vinegar. It was a fight and harsh words that had gotten them to this point in the first place.

Damon continues to stare at her, every muscle in his body taut with tension that he's not letting out for anything. She hates to think that it's because of her.

Elena decides to be the first one to speak, knowing that this staring contest is getting them nowhere.

"Are you done with your tantrum?" They both know that she's not only talking about the show that Elena had front row seats to not ten minutes ago and it only makes his fists clench tighter.

"Why are you back?" he asks with all the malice that he can muster in voice when speaking to her. But she just made it so damn hard to hate her.

"To ask you the question that you refuse to answer." He laughs darkly and rubs a hand down his face, trying to sober up at least a little bit for this conversation. He's so drunk he's not sure if she's even really here.

"I still stand firmly where I did five years ago Elena. I don't think that we work."

"How can you say that?"

"Because look at us!" He replies, still keeping his distance in the hallway, not trusting himself to move any closer. "You've been back for all of two seconds and we're already fighting. Besides, what couple gives each other the silent treatment for five years straight?!"

Elena opens her mouth to speak, but closes it quickly trying to think of the right thing to say before Damon starts speaking again. "I just think we're toxic Elena." He says sadly, "I just don't know how we'll ever work."

"Damon, there's something to be said for a couple who has been faithful to each other for five years apart."

Damon scoffs, "I haven't exactly been faithful Elena, women just have their way of flocking to me."

Elena rolls her eyes, "Not what I meant asshole , I haven't exactly been that kind of faithful either, but…look what I'm saying is, we've come back to each other. You could have run away when you got my postcard or I could have never come back, but we _have. _Damon we may not be perfect and we may be a little over the top when we're together, but I think that it's just part of our relationship." She shrugs her shoulders.

"We're too good together to let this thing go."

_Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door…_

Damon finally stumbles to the door to the parlor and hangs his head down again, looking more tired than ever. He doesn't speak for a long time, realizing what a colossal fuck up he was and how lucky was he to have a girl like Elena that would fight for him. That would come back for him.

He finally looks up and whispers softly, "I'm sorry Elena."

She walks forward and catches his face between her hands, rubbing her thumbs across his cheeks, she smiles tiredly and shrugs her shoulder.

"What for? I'm yours and that's it. Whatever. I really shouldn't have been gone for so long. I. am. Yours. And that's it forever."

He smiles softly in what feels like forever, and pulls her to him, kissing her firmly on the lips with the intention of never letting go.

"You're mine Elena Gilbert and that's it. Forever."

…_.._

_Thank you guys so much for reading. I really appreciate it and any review no matter how small would be great! This is sort of my way of coping with that horrific finale. Don't get me wrong, I still think the writing and acting was great, in fact it was amazing if I'm looking at from an unbiased standpoint. However, the fact that they killed off Damon was not appreciated…even if they did bring back Alaric. :)_

_Anyway I hope you guys enjoyed, this is one of my favorite Avett Brothers songs and this idea has been floating up in the old noggin for a while now! Glad to finally get it out there. Anyway, if you've never heard the song, here are the complete lyrics, that way you can see where the story came from. _

_-Katherine_

_The Ballad of Love and Hate_

_Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate, _

_My vacations ending I'm coming home late, _

_The weather was fine and the ocean was great _

_And I can't wait to see you again. _

_Hate reads the letter and throws it away, _

_No one here cares if you go or you stay, _

_I barely even noticed that you were away, _

_I'll see you or I won't whatever. _

_Love sings a song as she sails through the sky, _

_The water looks bluer through her pretty eyes, _

_And everyone knows it whenever she flies_

_And also when she comes down. _

_Hate keeps his head up and walks through the street, _

_Every stranger and drifter he greets, _

_And shakes hands with every loner he meets, _

_With a serious look on his face. _

_Love arrives safely with suitcase in tow, _

_Carrying with her the good things we know, _

_A reason to live and a reason to grow, _

_To trust, to hold, to care. _

_Hate sits alone on the hood of his car, _

_Without much regard to the moon or the stars, _

_Lazily killing the last of a jar_

_Of the strongest stuff you can drink. _

_Love takes a taxi a young man drives, _

_As soon as he sees her hope fills his eyes, _

_But tears follow after at the end of the ride _

_Cause he might never see her again_

_Hate gets home lucky to still be alive, _

_He screams over the sidewalk and into the drive, _

_The clock in the kitchen says 2:55 _

_And the clock in the kitchen is slow_

_Love has been waiting patient and kind, _

_Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign, _

_That the one that she cares for, whose out of his mind_

_Will make it back safe to her arms_

_Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door, _

_Weary head hung down eyes to the floor, _

_He says, Love I'm sorry and she says, What for_

_I'm yours and that's it, whatever. _

_I should not have been, _

_Gone for so long _

_I'm yours and that's it forever_

_You're mine and that's it forever. _


End file.
